This invention, which resulted from a contract with the United States Department of Energy, relates to a process for recovering niobium from uranium-niobium alloys.
Applications for uranium are limited by the corrosion susceptibility and relatively low strength of the metal. However, uranium-niobium alloys are corrosion resistant and relatively strong, and these alloys are consequently frequently substituted for uranium in the nuclear industry. Since niobium is expensive, a process is needed for recovering it from the machining scrap of uranium-niobium alloys.